Real Life vs SBPro

[ChanceBS]

For someone who is a capable gunner in in Steel Beast Pro (Gun rating 106). Would that someone have any skills getting steel on a target in Real Life?

[CharlieB]

Real gunnery control systems are not as easy to use as a mouse, joystick or control pad in the comfort of you own home.

For one Tanks bounce about. Two, turrets are crampt hot and sweaty places. And three, it rains in real like putting mud and water all over the GPS and TISH.

Having said that I guess you would have a head start over a novice.

[GH_Lieste]

A gunnery rating of over 100, also suggests the influence of a scoring bug within the gunnery range. It is quite possible to miss frequently, take many 20+ seconds per kill and still score highly with the appropriate actions.

One of my 'personae' has a gunnery rating of 357! But realistically I only achieve 95-100 scores about half the time on the range, and since the dispersion changes a perfect score becomes much harder to acheive.

Leopard AS1 is probably the easiest vehicle to use as the gunner only has to worry about the fast APFSDS rounds, as HESH is not called by the commander, and no HEAT is carried.

[Blackhorse311]

Yeah, I concur with Charlie. Some of my gunners used to do great [like 100% first round hits] in UCOFT (an old gunnery simulator that the US Army used back in the 80's) but then would only qualify as QUALIFIED on Table VIII.

Using a joystick is more like firing from the commanders position (at least in an M1) than from the gunners position. Also you don't get that nice shove to the forehead when you fire, you don't get to smell that burnt ammonia from the spent casing and you get to use both eyes in the game, (the gunners sight in the M1 is useable with only one eye).

Combine the cramped area, the smells (burnt ammonia, farts, BO, diesel, hydraulic fluid, spilled MREs) your legs falling asleep (remember its cramped) the bumps and bruises you get from being smacked around by your young smartass driver, the constant hiss of the intercom in your ears through your CVC (Combat Vehicle Communications - the helmet that Tankers wear in a tank) which is rubbing your head and ears raw from wearing it so much, (plus it stinks from your nasty head), and for some reason not all of your shots hit first time. I can't for the life of me figure out why though.

If you can integrate all of that into the simlation and still hit 100% go see a recruiter and tell him you're the shiz-nit and need to get into the Army ASAP!

[Hedgehog]

Or you could just buy your own tank and move to Texas.

[Shootme4fun]

I disagree with some of ya there. While enviromental conditions and learning to use the switches on a tank take a while to learn, the fundamentals are the same. I use to play Steelbeasts Gold Addition all the time and I wasn't a gunner, but when it was my time and I was placed in the simulator with my platoon sergeant, I found that I didn't have a lot of trouble new gunners did. I understood about tracking and dumping my lead after firing. The only thing that stood in my way was learing how to boresight from the gunner's station rather than being a loader and hearing, "I can't see your hand f**kstick!" from my gunner.

P.S. We didn't have the suicide cable at the time incase you were wondering.

[Kingtiger]

P.S. We didn't have the suicide cable at the time incase you were wondering.

Hu?

[Shootme4fun]

Sorry about that Kingtiger. I get caught up in the U.S. army tanker slang sometimes. You know how the loader has to get out and insert the muzzle boresighting device so the gun can be zeroed? Well sometimes we don't have a cable long enough to reach the loader so he is stuck using hand signal to tell the gunner which way to move the gun. We called it the suicide cable because it was long enough to hang yourself with. Just a little joke.

[Kingtiger]

Sorry about that Kingtiger. I get caught up in the U.S. army tanker slang sometimes. You know how the loader has to get out and insert the muzzle boresighting device so the gun can be zeroed? Well sometimes we don't have a cable long enough to reach the loader so he is stuck using hand signal to tell the gunner which way to move the gun. We called it the suicide cable because it was long enough to hang yourself with. Just a little joke.

Ah, hehehe

never had that oportunity (suicide rope) as my driver was aiming the gun for me from the outside thue the shell ejector hatch, wich is 40cm from my head

(PBV302! )

[12Alfa]

For someone who is a capable gunner in in Steel Beast Pro (Gun rating 106). Would that someone have any skills getting steel on a target in Real Life?

Well when we had open house at my Regt some 12-15 year olds would do really good.If fact during one of the gunnery courses .

I droped in after hours with some kids on the a simulator and the students (on a gunnery course) took to training the kids.

After being told what they were doing wrong and told how to correct their mistakes the kids did well.

I think the younger you are to this kind of training the better one does.

I can't think of how as a old fart now how I would do on a gunnery course.

Now this simulator you know was for the 76mm with no lazer or lead, we call it basis gunnery. Some of the targets were movers as well. The students were having a good ol time with the kids, and well the instructors were impressed that all the lessons taught to the students were being said as per manual to the kids.

Nendto and playstation has served our youth well I think.

[Volcano]

I think the short answer is that if you do good in SB Pro / Pro PE then you would be capable of hitting a target in real life. But, as the other have said, you would have to get acclimated to the real world differences first, the most notable being the use of actual gunner's control handles and the ideosycrasis associated with using them to move around the sluggish turret.

[12Alfa]

I think the short answer is that if you do good in SB Pro / Pro PE then you would be capable of hitting a target in real life. But, as the other have said, you would have to get acclimated to the real world differences first, the most notable being the use of actual gunner's control handles and the ideosycrasis associated with using them to move around the sluggish turret.

Also, there is the gunnery course needed to make it to the range. This is a lot of studying in our army, lots of factors to learn and know by heart. The shootin of the gun is really the easiest part, the BS that goes long with it is the hardest part to endure.

Firring the big gun is lots of fum and if you play SB is really quite easy to hit a target:):)

[Tacbat]

But, as the other have said, you would have to get acclimated to the real world differences first...

Including factoring in wind drift, outside temperature, barrel temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, etc..

[Volcano]

Yep! You would also have to boresight the thing first and, before that, go though armament accuracy checks (AAC)s to ensure that you would hit anything to begin with. Not sure how other countries do it but AACs can be a long and tedious affair where you are basically checking the computer and its ability to calculate the different components of a firing solution as well entering data (computer correction factors) for the particular round types that you are about to use.

I guess the real answer to the question is: given a fully loaded and bore sighted tank, an SB Pro PE user would definitely be at an advantage over someone pulled right off the street. You would understand the concept and could probably put some rounds on a target, but you wouldn't be familiar with switchology and after the first few rounds you wouldn't know to (or how to for that matter) perform and MRS update. As 12Alfa said, SB does the job of represented all the "fun stuff" but cuts out the other 90% of the tedium involved.

[ARM505]

I had the chance to jump into a British sim of some kind during an Aerospace and Defence expo. I can only assume it was a Challenger sim? The gunners control handle didn't move at all, and served only as a grip - the control was a small playstation like thumb joystick that I really didn't like. It was hard to make fine movements, and I tended to make the sights jerk around a lot. Nonetheless, I managed to figure out how to change between coax and main gun but I didn't figure out how to use the ballistic computer properly so I just used judgement to shoot a mix of hard targets and infantry. The guy running the sim was pretty impressed, and showed me the score afterwards - 72 out of the required 95 from a total of 100. It can't have been too challenging a scenario, but I certainly enjoyed myself! I told him I had played SB1 to death. I had to explain what it was though.

[Ssnake]

If steel Beasts was useless for some gunnery training, neither Denmark nor Sweden nor Spain would use it, and even the Aussies are seriously considering it. Instrumental to this are gunnery control handle replicas so you can train the elementary motoric skills as well.

A PC based simulation is good enough to teach the basic principles, to get all the cognitive tasks right. But it can only be used as a supplement to conventional training, not as a replacement. Additional steps in simulator cabins and live firing are always necessary. However, there's a second and quite important part, and that's retaining acquired skills. Once that you have gone through the whole training process you can maintain your skills with a cheap sim like Steel Beasts because your brain will also remember the things that are missing.

[CharlieB]

I had the chance to jump into a British sim of some kind during an Aerospace and Defence expo. I can only assume it was a Challenger sim? The gunners control handle didn't move at all, and served only as a grip - the control was a small playstation like thumb joystick that I really didn't like. It was hard to make fine movements, and I tended to make the sights jerk around a lot. Nonetheless, I managed to figure out how to change between coax and main gun but I didn't figure out how to use the ballistic computer properly so I just used judgement to shoot a mix of hard targets and infantry. The guy running the sim was pretty impressed, and showed me the score afterwards - 72 out of the required 95 from a total of 100. It can't have been too challenging a scenario, but I certainly enjoyed myself! I told him I had played SB1 to death. I had to explain what it was though.

The Challenger 2 Control handle was designed as such for that very reason - to integrate the playstation generation!

The thumb controller does get some getting use to but once again - real life v's sim - the sight is easier to control on the real thing that it is on the sim. I personnal like it and that is why I usea thrustmaster gamecontroller for SBProPE!